Hard drive full with 200GB of used space that I can't find

Question

All of a sudden I've run out of space. On my 250GB hard drive, 236GB is used up with only 13GB free.

I used Finder to find big files. Nothing significant.

I used tools like Disk Inventory X, OmniDiskSweeper and Purple Tree, but according to them I've only used up 40GB.

So somehow 200GB is used up, but I can't see where.

Time Machine isn't running (and never has). The disk has no partitions.

Answer 1

I scanned my drive with DaisyDisk, and as an administrator. (Instructions) I found 187GB in the hidden ".DocumentsRevisons-V100" folder. These are document versions which the OS autosaves (more info). It appears to be from documents primarily from the app Sketch.

Here's how I removed the files.

• Open Terminal
• Paste defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES (This makes all hidden files visible)
• Relaunch Finder. You can hold down "Option" and then right click Finder. Click Relaunch.
• Look within the folder Macintosh HD/.DocumentRevisions-V100/ (For me there were a number of underlining folders with lots of files within.)
• Delete the folders and files within.
• Empty the Trash
• In Terminal paste defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles NO . This makes hidden files hidden again.
• Relaunch Finder again. Click the System Apple top left, then "About this Mac" and then "Storage." Breathe a sigh of relief.

Here's some articles I referred to:

• https://medium.com/@thomasdegry/how-sketch-took-over-200gb-of-our-macbooks-cb7dd10c8163#.kb2yopebo
• http://osxdaily.com/2012/02/20/clear-versions-history-auto-save-cache-data-in-mac-os-x/
• https://dribbble.com/shots/2184593-Sketch-users-Free-up-some-space
• https://www.designernews.co/stories/50043-hard-drive-mysteriously-filling-up

Answer 2

I did it the old fashioned way and created a cron job.

`#!/usr/bin/env bash 
 export DIRECTORY="/.DocumentRevisions-V100/.cs/ChunkStorage"
 if [ -d "$DIRECTORY" ]; then
    # Delete file
    rm -rf /.DocumentRevisions-V100/.cs/ChunkStorage/*
 fi`

With a cron job to remove at noon.

crontab -e contents 0 12 * * * /bin/bash /SCRIPTS/remove_chunkstorage_sketch.sh

Answer 3

There is a simple way to solve this problem. You can use the built in utility of macOS to see and clear unwanted files, hidden files/folder easily.

Go to the  > About This Mac menu on left top, go to storage section and click the Manage... button. In the document section you can see all the files and folders with their size and delete unwanted files.

Go through this guide for further info.

Answer 4

Failure message

In my case I was doing backup for my iPhone and it failed with error message: Not enough disk space.

After this message disappeared 230GB. It was not shown anywhere. Restart did not helped. I did opened MobileSync Backup folder and here was huge folder. I did delete it manually and cleaned trash bin.

Backup dir

/Users/<USER_NAME>/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup